My invention relates to a spa having a flexible tube whipping by reaction force due to exhaust of pressurized water. The tube is guided to whip in a single plane by a harness formed by a series of sleeves encircling the tube and connected to pivot about parallel axes extending at right angles to that plane.
My prior inventions concerning spas with moving jets include the following:
(a) Ser. No. 06/243,724, filed 3/16/81, now abandoned. PA1 (b) U.S. Pat. No. 4,523,340, issued 6/18/85. PA1 (c) Ser. No. 06/665,445, filed 10/26/84, now abandoned.
Users of spas enjoy my moving jets, which can be directed up and down the back, etc., as a gentle source of massage. My system of moving a jet in a spa is to propel a flexible tube to whip automatically by exhaust of pumped water. The water is being recirculated in spas in any case, for filtration of water, so I take advantage of an existing source of power to move the jet.
It has proven difficult, however, to provide the degree of reliability on such a whipping tube system that I consider to be desirable or needed. Upon failure, the water jet remains in some fixed position. The user might be able to reestablish the normal cycle of the jet by a simple adjustment or merely by again start the tube in motion, but I would like the system to work indefinitely, or at least until the tube has had a normal life, without any attention by the user to maintain whipping action. Causes of difficulty include:
(a) Variations in flexibility of the plastic or rubber tube despite the purchase of expensive materials. I have been using a 40 Durometer Shore-A flourosilicone manufactured by Dow Corning but significant variations in flexibility are encountered even in this high performance material.
(b) Variations in flexibility of the plastic or rubber tube due to aging and corrosive effects of disinfectants.
(c) Variations in dimensions of parts within suitable manufacturing tolerances.
(d) Limits of mass production. It is desirable that manufacture and assembly of the product can be achieved with needed reliability in routine mass production. Whereas higher reliability could be achieved by use of skilled personnel to adjust of "fine tune" the system, such deviation from mass production by lower cost personnel is understandably undesirable. The system should work despite the assumption that anything that can be "out of synch" will be "out of synch" in mass production.
It is an objective of my invention to increase reliability of whipping action of such spa jet tubes and to reduce the above discussed problems. More specifically, it is an objective of my invention to increase reliability by use of a harness (a) restricting whipping movement to a single vertical or other selected plane, and (b) limiting the amount of movement in the selected plane in terms of the distance of movement of the end of the tube or in terms of the angle with the horizontal the axis of the end of the tube makes at its limits, compared with the neutral position of the tube.
Further objectives of my invention include: to provide such a harness with reliable action, of economical cost, not requiring maintenance, and not requiring adjustment either upon original manufacture or during use.
My invention will be best understood, together with additional advantages and objectives thereof, when read with reference to the drawings.